Alicia M

Women henpecking boys over their reading choices is not the way to help them empathize with women. I'm not sure why this is difficult to understand.

It’s MUCH more important for boys to be socialized to identify/empathize with female POVs (something society has always failed with dire consequences for women) than for boys to develop a love of reading. If there are growing pains with this social endeavor that’s fine.

I don’t want to sit here and pick on Katie, but she did something interesting when she used this image of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. Hunger Games is actually a good example of a female protagonist who can appeal to male readers and still capture popular attention. But why? Let me remind you of why I started writing started writing in the first place. It was because I wasn’t finding the kind of hero I wanted for my sons. What kind of hero was that? Well, I wanted a hero who had to struggle through something hard. Someone who showed grit, perseverance, endurance. Someone who made mistakes and learned from them. Someone who had to work for what they got. For my oldest, who was struggling to read, I wanted him to see that it was worth it to push through the hard thing and come out the other side. I wanted him to have a model that showed a path for achievement instead of just being handed something. Think about it this way. If a young man wants to be successful in the world, and if he wants to be successful with women, he needs to become a competent individual. He needs to learn how to make money, how to be strong, how to be respectable. That’s what women are attracted to. What my boys need then are stories that treat the accumulation of value as something that can be primarily earned through his own agency and responsibility. That’s the path he’s actually going to have to walk. This is not the case for women. You can argue with me if you want. I invite it. Women, in general, have what I’ll call innate value. Societies all over the world, across time, have treated simply being a woman as something that grants you a kind of status. That’s why when the Titanic is sinking, nobody thinks twice about putting women and children first. Just by being women, they’re seen as something valuable to protect. You see that reflected in a lot of the stories written by women and centered on female characters. They are not stories that treat value as something that has to be earned. They embody the idea that value is something inherent in the person. Hunger Games works because Katniss makes it through her challenges through sacrifice, competence, grit, agency, skill, and determination under pressure. She got really good at archery. She was willing to sacrifice for her family. She listened during the training and came up with creative solutions. A young boy can look at her and say, “I could try to become that.” She is something he can emulate. Now take Shadow and Bone. Alina Starkov is ordinary. She gets overlooked, after all she's just an orphan who is serving as a cartographer. Nothing about her is particularly special until the story reveals that she’s a sun summoner—the only person in the world who can create light and potentially destroy the Shadow Fold. It turns out that she’s been suppressing her powers. Her arc is about learning to stop holding herself back and accept who she really is: this rare, amazing, powerful thing. Once she embraces the specialness that was always inside her, she gets to be confident, pretty, and powerful. It’s just about accepting herself. She always had it. That is a model a young man cannot emulate. Young men do not have innate specialness waiting to be revealed. Sure, there are Gary Stus and Chosen One tropes, but even in male Chosen One stories (secret princes and the like), there’s usually some degree of training, challenge, growth, or accountability that you don’t typically see with female heroes written for women. Why the difference? Because those stories appeal to women. We innately have this desire to feel desired, special, and wanted. That’s why the girls went gaga over Twilight. They loved the idea that Bella was somehow irresistible to both Edward and Jacob. They want to believe there’s something inside them that makes them so special they can get what they want. That just being them is enough to attract the right man. For women, there isn’t as clear a path through achievement toward success in relationships. A man doesn’t look at the fact that you got your doctorate or that you make six figures and see it as an appealing selling feature of your value as a wife. You may not like that, but it’s true. There might be some respect for the work put in, but in general he’d be just as happy dating the pretty waitress as the pretty lawyer. In fact he might be happier dating the pretty waitress, because she probably won’t feel like competition. We see this everywhere in women’s literature. Why is every romance centered on an average woman being chosen by a billionaire, a mob boss, the prince, the vampire king, or whatever? Women desire a man of status. They want to be the thing he desires, and they don’t want to have to do a ton of work aside from just being themselves to get there. So why can women access male stories and male hero’s journeys so easily, while boys often can’t access the female story of innate specialness? Part of it is that women like reading about competent men. That’s attractive to them. I have a story about a competent man who start out average and rises. Women find him appealing. They want to follow his story and watch him gain skills. They want to make him their book boyfriend because he is admirable. He shows them a model of masculinity they like. When a man looks at the pure female “innate specialness” story, though, is he seeing the same thing? Sometimes, if the character is kind and good-hearted and the decent guy gets her in the end. But when the story is framed around the girl who saves the world, who is the best of everything, who doesn’t need help, and is too excellent for ordinary men, suddenly it’s different. That woman isn’t going to give the good guy the time of day. She’s too special. She don’t need no man. So the male reader doesn’t want to read about her. He’s not appropriate for her. There’s nothing in it for him. She is a fantasy's fantasy. There are different types of stories that appeal to men and women unevenly. Women tend to be drawn to (and write) stories about innate specialness, self-actualization, and success through revealed powers. With men, even when there’s a special power inside them (think a character like Naruto, or Luke Skywalker), they still have to struggle, advance, and gain skills. It’s why litRPG is so popular with men. It’s a skills progression. The monsters get bigger as you get more powerful. The challenges grow with you. You progress up to the final boss. They want the rising to the top, the achievement, in a package they can envision and believe is possible for them. That’s the difference. One set of stories gives boys something they can model and strive toward. The other mostly doesn’t.

there’s something psychologically terroristic about these kids books that are full of adult platitudes. “there’s nothing wrong with asking for help”. yeah. my 5 year old never would have thought there was. “you don’t have to be extraordinary to be loved”. do not tell my kid that

I live in Europe I hate that my quality of life in the next few years will be decided by a bunch of rednecks in Iowa